He may have risen through the ranks of the cut-throat Australian Formula Ford Championship and Toyota 86 Racing Series, but Cameron Hill says this weekend’s opening round of the Porsche Wilson Security Carrera Cup Australia at the Adelaide 500 will be the most challenging race meeting of his career.

The 21-year-old Canberra driver’s Porsche 911 GT3 Cup will be run by his small family-based team from their Queanbeyan workshop, and since taking delivery of the car three weeks ago, they have worked relentlessly in their efforts to learn how to extract the optimum performance from the precision-engineered machine.

“We’re new to the Porsche game, and we’re up against teams that already have knowledge with these sorts of cars, and are running multiple entries in the series,” Hill said.

“This is all brand-new to us and because we’re on our own, we don’t have any reference data. It’s an extremely steep learning curve for me to learn to drive the car, and also my crew to find a balanced setup.

“We’ve completed a few test days on different tracks but we’ve had to be frugal with how we’ve used the track time. Tyres for these cars are not cheap so it’s been a balancing act to understand how setup changes affect the car, but not doing more laps than necessary.

Hill comes into this year’s Carrera Cup series with solid credentials, including his 2015 Australian Formula Ford title and more race wins than anyone else in the last two years of the Toyota 86 Series. But in Carrera Cup, he’ll be facing the toughest opposition he has ever encountered.

“It’s an extremely high-quality field this year – you have drivers like James Moffat and Dale Wood, who were racing Supercars last year.

“Then there are other fast young drivers, such as Dylan O’Keeffe, Jaxon Evans, Jordan Love and Nick McBride.

“It will be the first time I’ve raced at Adelaide as well – I enjoy learning new tracks but this will be harder than normal, as I’m still coming to grips with the car.”

Hill will race at the Adelaide 500 with support from Southern Star Truck Centre and Anytime Fitness. All sessions will be broadcast live on FOX Sports 506.